Fortress World Barbarism Via Climate Change

Climate change may lead to a "fortress world" in which the wealthy have acquired the rights to places where it is still reasonably livable, while the rest of us will just have to fend for ourselves. This according to the vice-president of a UK intergovernmental panel on climate change.

"Climate change is, or could be, the additional factor which will exacerbate the existing problems of poverty, environmental degradation, social polarization and terrorism and it could lead to a very chaotic situation," said Mohan Munasinghe at Cambridge University. "If you see what is going on in some of the gated communities in some countries you do find that rich people live in those kind of protected environments. If you see the restrictions on international travel you see the beginnings of the fortress world syndrome even in entering and leaving countries."

In one example, Bangladesh is expected to lose up to 17% of its land to the rising seas predicted by climate change experts.

(Star Trek Cloud Minders Stratos City)

Depending on your reading and viewing habits, this scenario is one that science fiction fans have seen before. In the 1969 Star Trek episode The Cloud Minders, airy, elite people live in a fortress in the clouds, literally above the polluted world of the workers who make it possible.

A similar theme of separation between those who work and those who enjoy is found in HG Wells' The Time Machine. Readers?